We study experimentally the effects of cost structure and prize allocation rules on the performance of rent-seeking contests. Most previous studies use a lottery prize rule and linear cost, and find both overbidding relative to the Nash equilibrium prediction and significant variation of...

This article examines behavior in the two-player, constant-sum Colonel Blotto game with asymmetric resources in which players maximize the expected number of battlefields won. The experimental results support the main qualitative predictions of the theory. In the auction treatment, where winning...

Given the framework introduced by Dutta and Sen (2012), this paper offers a comprehensive analysis of (Nash) implementation with partially honest agents when there are three or more participants. First, it establishes a condition which is necessary and sufficient for implementation. Second, it...

In a two-agent society with partially-honest agents, we extend Dutta and Sen (2009)'s results of Nash implementation to the domain of weak orders. We identify the class of Nash implementable social choice correspondences with a "gap" between necessary and sufficient conditions, both when exactly...

This paper studies implementation problems in the wake of a recent new trend of implementation theory which incorporates a non-consequentialist flavor of the evidence from experimental and behavioral economics into the issues. Specifically, following the seminal works by Matsushima (2008) and...

Using a two-player Tullock-type contest we show that intuitively and structurally different contests can be strategically equivalent. Strategically equivalent contests generate the same best response functions and, as a result, the same equilibrium efforts. However, strategically equivalent...

In this paper, we introduce the weak and the strong notions of partially honest agents (Dutta and Sen, 2012), and then study implementation by natural price-quantity mechanisms (Saijo et al., 1996, 1999) in pure exchange economies with three or more agents in which pure-consequentialistically...

We find the sufficient conditions for the existence of multiple equilibria in Tullock-type contests, and show that asymmetric equilibria arise even under symmetric prize and cost structures. We then present existing contests where multiple equilibria exist under reasonably weak conditions.

We analyze a group contest in which n groups compete to win a group-specific public good prize. Group sizes can be different and any player may value the prize differently within and across groups. Players exert costly efforts simultaneously and independently. Only the highest effort (the...